Samtec Introduces 14 Gbps FireFlyTM FMC Development Kit

New Albany, IN: Samtec, a privately held $662MM global manufacturer of a broad line of electronic interconnect solutions, proudly announces the release of the new 14 Gbps FireFly™ FMC Development Kit. This new solution offers an easy-to-use evaluation and development platform for Samtec’s FireFly™ optical engines.

FireFly™ optical engines
(https://www.samtec.com/optics/optical-cable/mid-board/firefly) make the electrical to optical conversion in the transmit path and the optical to electrical conversion in the receive path. They are based on proven 850 nm VCSEL array technology while featuring adjustable power levels to support cable lengths up to 100 m.

As a VITA 57.1-compliant FMC, Samtec’s 14 Gbps FireFly™ FMC Module can be used for optical data communication on any FMC-enabled FPGA development board supporting high-speed multi-gigabit transceivers. It can run system data or BERT testing from a single channel to all ten channels in parallel. Technical documentation and FPGA reference designs are available for quick start-up.

“Evaluating optical engine technology has high barriers of entry,” said Matt Burns, Product Marketing Manager at Samtec, Inc. “Samtec’s new 14 Gbps FireFly™ FMC Development Kit eases FireFly™ evaluation and development by leveraging the FMC interface common on most industry-standard FPGA development tools.”

About Samtec, Inc.
Founded in 1976, Samtec is a privately held, $662MM global manufacturer of a broad line of electronic interconnect solutions, including IC-to-Board and IC Packaging, High-Speed Board-to-Board, High-Speed Cables, Mid-Board and Panel Optics, Flexible Stacking, and Micro/Rugged components and cables. Samtec Technology Centers are dedicated to developing and advancing technologies, strategies and products to optimize both the performance and cost of a system from the bare die to an interface 100 meters away, and all interconnect points in between. With 33 locations in 18 different countries, Samtec’s global presence enables its unmatched customer service. For more information, please visit http://www.samtec.com.

Systems with high speed serial links often have serial channels which result in signal distortion described as insertion loss, reflection, cross-talk, and other channel impairments. Receiver equalization can help compensate for such channel-driven losses and distortions, but link tuning and bring-up can be non-trivial even for the most experienced transceiver and signal integrity specialists. In this video, you'll learn how Xilinx FPGAs with fully auto-adaptive equalization is critical to high speed transceiver design and enables system designers to get their systems up and running quickly.

At DESIGN West 2012 (aka "ESC" San Jose), Senior Editor Chris A. Ciufo sat down with TI's Matt Kurtz, Manager, Wireless Connectivity Group. Matt's group's job is to add wireless capabilities to microcontrollers with "everything from ANT to ZigBee". Consider their SimpleLink initiative, which is comprised of chipsets, protocols, APIs and drivers that make easy the task of adding wireless to a TI microcontroller product. In this short video, Matt explains that TI's focus is one-stop-shopping and simplicity. Judging from market feedback, TI has met its goals.

The economic downturn has had an upside for some industry segments. PCB prototyping service Screaming Circuits has seen business climb steadily since it’s founding in 2003 as more companies have cut back staff and resources, stretching engineering staffs beyond their own capabilities. Screaming Circuits recently formed a relationship with Newark/element14 to offer their services to the element14 community. In this interview with Duane Benson, director of marketing and sales, Benson elaborates on the growing prototyping market in the PCB industry as well as the challenges and needs of their customer base.